5 Companies That Came To Win This Week

The Week Ending Aug. 3

Topping this week's roundup of companies that came to win are two solution providers making key acquisitions to expand their capabilities and product lineups.

Also making the list are ThoughtSpot, which hired a new executive from Nutanix; YellowBrick Data's strong funding annoucement; and NVidia and NetApp unveiling a new partnership.

Not everyone in the IT industry was making smart moves this week, of course. For a rundown of companies that were unfortunate, unsuccessful or just didn't make good decisions, check out this week's 5 Companies That Had A Rough Week roundup.

Computex Acquires Synetra

Computex Technology Solutions, No. 116 on the 2018 CRN Solution Provider 500, expanded its Cisco capabilities and its managed services practice by acquiring Dallas-based MSP Synetra. With the deal, Houston-based Computex, a $170 million solution provider and already a top Cisco enterprise partner, gains a $30 million MSP business with additional Cisco technology talent, MSP muscle, and expanded geographic reach mainly in the oil and gas business with offices across Texas.

The acquisition makes Computex even more of a go-to partner for Cisco, its largest vendor partner, CEO John Schilsky told CRN. "The hardest thing for us right now is finding hot talent, especially Cisco talent," he said. "This is going to be super important for us to expand our Cisco capabilities and reach going forward."

SS&C Acquires Eze Software

In a channel acquisition at the other end of the scale, Windsor, Conn.-based SS&C Technology Holdings this week unveiled plans to buy Eze Software in a $1.45 billion deal to bring it an award-winning suite of investment products. The deal is being funded by a combination of available cash and financing, and is expected to close by year-end.

Boston-based Eze's investment suite is a born-in-the-cloud integrated platform that synchronizes data throughout the life cycle of an investment trade. "Our clients are focused on reinventing their organizations," said Bill Stone, chairman and CEO of SS&C, in a statement. "The addition of Eze Software aligns with our strategy to transform today's investment operations."

ThoughtSpot Grabs Nutanix Exec

Sudheesh Nair this week started moving his office a few miles down the road from Nutanix's San Jose, Calif., headquarters to the Palo Alto, Calif. office of ThoughSpot. Nair, who drove Nutanix to become a powerhouse in the hyper-converged infrastructure business, will be ThoughtSpot's new CEO. The ThoughtSpot business analytics platform uses search and artificial intelligence technology to generate analysis and business insight from huge volumes of data. The company in May raised $145 million in Series D funding.

Nutanix founder and CEO Dheeraj Pandey this week in an SEC filing said Nair was crucial to Nutanix's success. "I consider him a founder who was my partner in crime as we built this company from scratch," Pandey wrote.

Yellowbrick Data Receives $44M Funding Round

Yellowbrick Data emerged from stealth this week with its all-flash analytics and data warehouse appliance the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup says is magnitudes faster than current data warehouse systems. The company also disclosed a $44 million Series A funding round from DFJ, Google Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Third Point Ventures.

Yellowbrick Data, founded in 2014, developed an integrated appliance that uses flash memory hardware and software to handle native flash memory queries. Its modular design can scale to petabytes of data. The system includes an analytic database designed for flash memory that can handle high-volume data ingestion and processing and run mixed workloads of ad hoc queries, large batch queries, reporting, ETL (extract, transform and load) processes, and more.

Nvidia Strengthens Cloud Ties With NetApp

Nvidia this week staked its claim as the de facto provider of GPU technology for enterprise artificial intelligence, with the introduction with storage technology provider of the NetApp Ontap AI. The marks the second time that Santa Clara, Calif.-based Nvidia partnered with top all-flash storage array vendors to develop an integrated enterprise AI offering following the March introduction of AIRI with Pure Storage.

The NetApp and Pure Storage offerings both combine Nvidia's DGX GPU technology with all-flash storage and 100-Gbit Ethernet networking thanks to Cisco or Arista Networks. They differ primarily in that the NetApp Ontap AI also leverages NetApp's Data Fabric technology to easily shift AI workloads between on-premises, private cloud and public cloud infrastructure.